Grief is not beautiful or pretty, and it doesn’t only arrive when somebody we love dies.
Sometimes a person has spent a lifetime grieving a life they thought they would live, a version of themselves they barely got to know, or something they wished for and loved long before it ever had the chance to become real.
We call it yearning, wishing, being disappointed, and carry on as though naming it something else has made it easier to live with.
But underneath there can be this forever sadness, a pain that is hard to explain because how do you explain missing something that, to everyone looking in, you never really had?
How do you explain missing yourself when you are still here, answering the phone, making supper, being who everyone has come to expect you to be?
Sometimes that pain finds its way into our patterns, into the persona we have learned to live through, into the familiar words, “It’s just life,” or, “That’s just how it is.” A disappointment accepted, a wish put away, something we have learned to do without, and because we can still get up and get through the day, we assume the cost must be bearable. But is it really, or have we just become very good at breathing through something unbearable?
We carry on, holding a love for something inside of us that feels dead, until it comes through again like a visiting spirit of what once was or what could have been. A song, a conversation, seeing someone live a little of the life we had imagined for ourselves, and there it is, that ache we thought we had made peace with.
We might even be annoyed with ourselves for still feeling it, as though getting on with life should have somehow put an end to loving what we lost.
Life is confusing enough without having to find the right language for everything we feel, but I wonder what happens when we stay with the sadness long enough to recognize grief.
When we can finally say, something mattered to me here, something was alive in me, and I have been hurting over its absence for a very long time.
The more I experience grief, the more expansive it becomes, so far beyond what I once understood the word to mean.
We can be in a relationship with it more often than we know, living it through its many names and emotions, trying to explain something we cannot hold in our hands and say, “Look at this, this is what hurts.” Sometimes we don’t even have the words to explain it to ourselves. And I wonder how often that longing sends us looking for love, looking to be loved, hoping someone will reach a place in us that we have been missing for years.
How much of a life can slip through our fingers while we keep searching, without recognizing the grief that has been asking for somewhere to land?
Because we loved, even ourselves at one time, before we learned which parts to put away, which wishes to stop speaking about, which version of us would be easier for everyone to live with. We learned to carry on without her, while something of her kept whispering.
Maybe we have been hearing that whisper for years and calling it wanting too much.
We are so used to speaking of grief when someone dies, and even then there is more to the loss than we can always explain.
We lose someone we love, and we can also lose a version of ourselves that existed with them, a part of our life we can never enter in quite the same way again.
Love carries us through, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes with no idea how we are going to get through an ordinary day without what once belonged in it.
I keep coming back to that, the love inside the grief, and how little room we sometimes give ourselves to admit what we loved.
The life we wanted, the person we were, the hope we had, even if nobody else ever knew how much it meant.
So what did we love that we believe has died?
Much love,
Corrie Thorne-Cameron, Founder and Creator of More Than Existing
“You don’t need another self-help book. You need a mirror, a story, and the courage to see yourself in both.”
Corrie Thorne-Cameron
Modern-day Mystic | Writer | Inspirational Storyteller | Channel | Psychic Medium | Lightworker & Mentor | Spiritual Teacher/Coach | Consultant & Healer.
Corrie guides people beyond survival and back into the truth of who they are. Blending her experience as a Reiki Master/Teacher with her ancestral roots, Corrie channels the wisdom of spirit and the realms beyond to bring healing, clarity, and soulful transformation.
She is the author of four published books, the creator of two oracle card decks, and a prolific writer featured in Elephant Journal and other recognized publications.
Through her intuitive teachings, rooted in shadow work, spiritual psychology, and lived experience, Corrie helps individuals break free from limiting narratives and return to emotional, spiritual, and personal sovereignty.
Corrie created the More Than Existing™️Lightworker Certification coaching program to encourage individuals to discover the power of healing and self-actualization.
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A spiritual, empowerment, and metaphysical teacher; medium; mystic; artist; professional life/business coach; published author; and the founder/creator of the More Than Existing™️movement.
